September 14, 2009

Kanye West brings the drama to Jay Leno's prime-time debut

Who knew the most compelling moment of the debut of "The Jay Leno Show" would be several seconds of silence, during which you could have heard a pin drop in Leno's NBC studio.

It came after Leno gently asked Kanye West if his mother would have been disappointed in West's behavior toward Taylor Swift at Sunday's MTV VMAs. After a long pause, a clearly regretful West answered that he'd have to take some time off soon and ponder how best to live a better life in the future.

Will the Leno show have this kind of pop-culture relevance going forward? Doubtful. Expect lots of folksy humor and middlebrow jokes from the entertainment industry's most mainstream guy. As he proved on Monday, Leno's not the funniest host out there -- in fact sometimes his humor is painfully schticky -- but he is one of the hardest-working men in show business.

Some other highs and lows:

The good

"It was rude, period," Kanye West during his apology to Taylor Swift. Well said, sir.

Kanye West, Rihanna and Jay-Z on the debut episode? Not a bad collection of musical guests, especially for a host as vanilla as Leno.

A re-creation of a segment of the syndicated show "Cheaters" in which bandleader Kevin Eubanks was confronted by the talk-show host and "Cheaters" host Joey Greco about Eubanks' alleged two-timing with a Leno lookalike. The bit was so unexpected that it ended up being kind of funny.

The first substantial segment wasn't exactly a laugh-riot -- it was a
musically themed trip to a car wash with singer Dan Finnerty. Even if
it was only moderately funny, it reinforced the "Jay Leno Show" brand
of inoffensively average comedy and also established that the show
would not be dominated by a couch and celebrity guests.

Jerry Seinfeld as the first sit-down guest (who wasn't on a couch
-- he and Leno sat next to each other in armchairs). A practiced
talk-show entertainer, he got things off to a smoothly amusing start (and Jerry and Jay are such pros that they really didn't need the drop-in, via video screen, of Oprah Winfrey but hey, these powerful celebrities have to stick together, right?).

The bad

Making a sex joke involving Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Are you trying to age up your already mature demographic, Jay?

The opening monologue was full of the sort of middle-of-the-road softballs that Jay specialized in during his "Tonight Show" run. I'm sure a lot of people missed that. Then there are those of us who didn't. At all.

The set. It didn't look all that different from the "Tonight Show" set,
but the various design elements didn't quite gel together.

Two jokes about erectile disfunction drugs? Really? Including one
during a hah-hah, not-very-funny fake interview of President Obama? Aim
high, Jay. Aim high.

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